Open wounds, shrunk...but wounds still: Mental Illness in the Life and Literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Transcription

1 College of William and Mary W&M Publish College of William & Mary Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects Open wounds, shrunk...but wounds still: Mental Illness in the Life and Literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald Leah C. Bailey College of William and Mary Follow this and additional works at: Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Bailey, Leah C., "Open wounds, shrunk...but wounds still: Mental Illness in the Life and Literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald" (2015). College of William & Mary Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M Publish. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of William & Mary Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M Publish. For more information, please contact

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3 Bailey 1 Open wounds, shrunk but wounds still: Mental Illness in the Life and Literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Catherine Bailey One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to a size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night ( ) Fitzgerald s marriage to Zelda Sayre, in 1920, united two exceptionally talented and creative individuals, both suffering from mental illnesses. Zelda s psychotic breakdown in 1930 had a traumatic effect on Fitzgerald, but it also caused him to refocus and finish his novel Tender Is the Night (1934). Her breakdown also inspired him to examine his own breakdowns and write his essay The Crack-Up (1936). This essay about his mental breakdown follows in the confessional literary tradition. Along with Fitzgerald s note-books, letters, and other essays, The Crack-Up functions as a primary source from which to gain insight into Fitzgerald s alcoholism and mood disorder. Tender Is the Night is also confessional and functions as a masked memoir. In the novel, Dick Diver resembles Fitzgerald with his own drinking problem and fluctuating moods. Moreover, Nicole Diver s mental illness resembles Zelda s (although Nicole s schizophrenia is misdiagnosed). Ultimately, F. Scott Fitzgerald s personal life profoundly influenced his literature. He suffered psychological wounds, and he wrote in order to make sense of those wounds and to try to heal them. Yet, his writing goes beyond catharsis in the way it documents the human condition.

4 Bailey 2 In a letter to Fitzgerald, a friend defined emotional bankruptcy as drawing upon resources which one does not possess ( Letters to Fitzgerald 291). His friend believed that the drainage of one s resources resulted in a state of melancholy or depression. Fitzgerald s own adoption of the concept of emotional bankruptcy reflected the modern culture of stock markets and monetary vernacular in which he lived. His fixation on the concept grew from his personal obsession with money. However, the concept of emotional bankruptcy had its roots in the Victorian era when rest cures were common among those whose aim was returning the nerve force to its proper level (Lawlor 128). Victorians defined melancholy as a symptom of a disease of vitality, an impoverishing of the circulation and a slackening of nutrition (Lawlor 132). An individual was perceived to have a limited amount of energy, and specialists believed that without energy, the individual would grow depressed. Fitzgerald and his contemporaries reconceptualized the 19 th -century notion of one s nerve force (Lawlor 107) into monetary terms. In the novel Tender Is the Night, emotional bankruptcy is at the crux of the decline of Dick Diver, who, according to Matthew Bruccoli, suffers a lesion of the spirit in consequence of giving too much of himself to his wife, friends, and patients (Bruccoli 72). The novel contains no evidence to suggest that his role as therapist to other patients contributes to his decline. He does, though, give much of himself to friends and party guests throughout the novel: His eyes were of a bright, hard blue and there was never any doubt at whom he was looking or talking and this is a flattering attention, for who looks at us? glances fall upon us, curious or disinterested, nothing more (Fitzgerald, Tender 19). Dick gives to those around him the gift of intentional flattery; he operates

5 Bailey 3 through emotional gift-giving. As Michael Nowlin argues, [Dick] prefers giving people back a flattering idea of themselves, and in exchange receiving their love and devotion (Nowlin 59). Yet, that gift-giving does not directly cause his decline. His sociability may, however, correlate to his increasing intake of alcohol, which propels his steady decline into an intensive crack-up. However, the most influential factor influencing Diver s emotional bankruptcy is his relationship with Nicole. Furthermore, it is the dual nature of his relation to Nicole, as husband and physician (Adams 380) that leads to his own disintegration. Although Freud warns that a transference-love relationship between patient and therapist is potentially harmful to the patient, in Tender Is the Night it is Dr. Diver who experiences the consequences. In his analysis of Tender Is the Night, Jeffrey Berman includes Freud s definition of transference: In every analytic treatment there arises, without the physician s agency, an intense emotional relationship between the patient and the analysis which is not to be accounted for by the actual situation. It can be of a positive or of a negative character and can vary between the extremes of passionate, completely sensual love and the unbridled expression of an embittered defiance and hatred. This transference to give it its short name soon replaces in the patient s mind the desire to be cured, and, so long as it is affectionate and neither more nor less than the mainspring of the joint work of analysis. Later on, when it has become passionate or has been converted into hostility, it becomes the principal tool of the resistance. It may then happen that it will paralyse the patient s powers of associating

6 Bailey 4 and endanger the success of the treatment. Yet it would be senseless to try to evade it; for an analysis without transference is an impossibility. (Berman 73) Furthermore, according to Freud, the love relationship that results is illicit and not intended to last for ever (Freud 18). While the full flood of Freudianization did not hit America until the late 1930s, (Douglas 123), Fitzgerald certainly applies Freudian theories to his novel. Although his application of Freud s transference theory is simplistic, Dick and Nicole s relationship follows the theory fairly closely. It is without the physician s agency that their relationship begins; in fact, it is largely Nicole s manipulation, and later her family s use of wealth as power, that causes the marriage. First, it is Franz whose name itself is a linguistic nod to Freud who categorizes the relationship as transference: It was the best thing that could have happened to her, said Franz dramatically, a transference of the most fortuitous kind. (Fitzgerald, Tender 120). For Franz, the transference that takes place between a young Nicole diagnosed with schizophrenia 1 and Dr. Dick Diver is the best available solution to a mental sickness that seems incurable; Franz, in effect, recruits Diver to pursue a relationship with Nicole. His motivation to do so begins with her letters, which function as primary sources containing insight into her state of mind. He explains to Dick that reading her letters helped us here they were a measure of her condition (Fitzgerald, Tender 130). Nicole s letters provide the doctors Franz, Dohlmer, and then Dick with much of her interiority, and a way to track the progress, or lack thereof, of her mental illness. 1 "Diagnosis: Divided Personality. Acute and down-hill phases of the illness. The fear of men is a symptom of the illness and is not at all conditional." (Fitzgerald, Tender 128)

7 Bailey 5 On the spectrum of normalcy to madness, the letters fluctuate. The letters were divided into two classes, of which the first class was of marked pathological turn, and of which the second class was entirely normal, and displayed a richly maturing nature (Fitzgerald, Tender 121). The first wave of letters reflects the depth of her mental state, which Nicole describes in one letter as being a highly nervous state (Fitzgerald, Tender 122). Nicole explains that nobody around her is explaining the incestuous violation she has experienced and what that means for her mental health. She writes, the blind must be led (Fitzgerald, Tender 122), and suggests that nobody is taking the initiative to lead her. In this way, she compares her mental and emotional state to blindness, a handicap, crippling. Nicole s letters to Dick continue to venture into darker themes: I write to you because there is no one else to whom I can turn. I am completely broken and humiliated pretending that what is the matter with my head is curable nobody saw fit to tell me the truth about anything. I am lonesome all the time in a half daze (Fitzgerald, Tender 123). In this letter she shows how lacking she is in emotional support and demonstrates early signs of dependence on Dick. In another, she self-diagnoses herself: Dear Captaine: I think one thing today and another tomorrow. That is really all that s the matter with me, except a crazy defiance and a lack of proportion (Fitzgerald, Tender 124). In another, she considers herself too unstable (Fitzgerald, Tender 124) to continue writing. These letters process her mental state through introspection, a sort of talk therapy with Dr. Diver. A sudden change comes as a result of the quasi-talk therapy: the second wave of letters. Nicole increasingly recognizes rebirth in herself and in the world around her: I am slowly coming back to life. Today the flowers and the clouds (Fitzgerald, Tender 124). Diver explains to Franz that Nicole seems hopeful

8 Bailey 6 and normally hungry for life even rather romantic (Fitzgerald, Tender 131). The bonds of transference begin to form for Nicole in her written correspondence with Dick, who as scholarly psychiatrist 2 is drawn to the letters in their written form. Berman summarizes Freud s definition of transference-love as: when the patient becomes infatuated with the analyst (Berman 73). Dick s own infatuation with Nicole, as patient, comes with hesitation; it is, then, Nicole who takes control, who has the agency, in their first encounters. She is aware of her beauty during their first encounter, and, when the third party leaves, Nicole took advantage of this to stand up and the impression of her youth and beauty grew on Dick until it welled up inside him in a compact paroxysm of emotion. She smiled, a moving childish smile that was like all the lost youth in the world (Fitzgerald, Tender 134). When Nicole takes advantage of a situation in which she is finally alone with Dick, her beauty and youth capture his attention. Her very blonde hair dazzled Dick her face lighting up like an angel s (Fitzgerald, Tender 135). She shows intention in their second encounter, as well: She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself (Fitzgerald, Tender 136). Additionally, Nicole kisses with intention. She kisses Dick with a strong force: Now there was this scarcely saved waif of disaster bringing him the essence of a continent (Fitzgerald, Tender 136). Although Nicole is, in some ways, a waif, a neglected, abandoned child who is furthermore a victim of incestuous rape she brings the force of a continent to her intimate relations with Dick. She is inwardly weak, outwardly strong. In response, Dick advises her to participate in youthful activities, some she has likely missed out on. You re all well, he said. Try to forget the past; don t overdo 2 Dick s literature: A Psychology for Psychiatrists. (Fitzgerald, Tender 137)

9 Bailey 7 things for a year or so. Go back to America and be a debutante and fall in love and be happy. (Fitzgerald, Tender ). In order to overcompensate for their age difference about 10 years he not only reminds her that she is young, but also advises her to be young. Dick hesitates in his relations with Nicole because of his hyper-awareness of the transference relationship that is developing, and probably because of his awareness of the general dangers of transference-love. As they are walking, Dick tried honestly to divorce her from any obsession that he had stitched her together glad to see her build up happiness and confidence from him; the difficulty was that, eventually, Nicole brought everything to his feet, gifts of sacrificial ambrosia, of worshipping myrtle (Fitzgerald, Tender 137). Nicole appears to be strong, to be healthy, and Dick does not want her to attribute that strength to him; he is avoiding a dependence that is, however, already forming. Nicole is beginning to see him as savior, a rescuer from her father and from the prison of her past, and she is honoring him as such. Nicole, instead of resisting transference, is transferring gifts to him. In his detailed study of gift-exchange, Lewis Hyde explains how a gift is consumed when it moves from one hand to another with no assurance of anything in return (Hyde 9). Nicole s gifts of ambrosia and myrtle are described as being given in worship and in sacrifice. Her gifts also bear the promise of growth. Hyde asserts that there is an association between gift exchange and increased worth, fertility, liveliness. Where true, organic increase is at issue, gift exchange preserves that increase; the gift grows because living things grow (Hyde 11). Nicole s gift-giving not only represents how she views Dick as a savior. By giving him living objects, she demonstrates the hope that she is placing in a fruitful, romantic relationship.

10 Bailey 8 Freud argues that transference is inevitable; Dick and Nicole provide evidence to support Freud s claim. Dick walked beside her, feeling her unhappiness, and wanting to drink the rain that touched her cheek (Fitzgerald, Tender 143). As they walk, Dick becomes increasingly absorbed in Nicole s mood, feels her emotions, and desires her physically. When they exchange a kiss, the absorption solidifies, because gifts have the power to join people together (Hyde 70). Their intimacy is described as: atoms joined and inseparable As he held her and tasted her, and as she curved in further and further toward him, with her own lips, new to herself, drowned and engulfed in love, yet solaced and triumphant, he was thankful to have an existence at all, if only as a reflection in her wet eyes (Fitzgerald, Tender 155). As joined atoms, they are absorbed into each other; they become one unit, which is Fitzgerald s interpretation of Freud s concept of transference. Berman explains that Fitzgerald is using the term not in its dynamic psychoanalytic context the projection of essentially primitive experiences and emotions onto other people but in the more general sense of an absorption or incorporation of one individual by another in a shifting love relationship (Berman 72). In the case of Nicole Warren and Dick Diver, it is Dick who is absorbed or incorporated into Nicole. For him, it is a wild submergence of soul, a dipping of all colors into an obscuring dye (Fitzgerald, Tender 217). And, although he is a psychiatrist and she is a patient, Nicole gets the upper hand, and is aware of this power dynamic: Nicole had a better hold on him now and she held it. (Fitzgerald, Tender 155). Nicole feels accomplished. Freud argues that if the patient s advances were returned it would be a great triumph for her, but a complete defeat for the treatment (Freud 24). While Nicole does triumph in

11 Bailey 9 making Dick belong to her, transference will, instead, prove to be more damaging to Dr. Diver. Physical intimacy in Tender Is the Night causes absorption, and it is sexual intercourse or erotic gift-giving that finalizes the process. To claim Dick as hers, Nicole goes to his room in the night: Her beauty climbed the rolling slope, it came into the room, rustling ghostlike through the curtains (Fitzgerald, Tender 156). Although Fitzgerald does not explicitly depict sexual intercourse between Dick and Nicole, it is implied by Nicole s comment the following morning: I m not ashamed about last night (Fitzgerald, Tender 156). Dick reflects, when he left her outside the sad door on the Zurichsee and she turned and looked at him he knew her problem was one they had together for good now (Fitzgerald, Tender 157). Because they have had sex, and have given their bodies to one another, they have physically become one unit, and, as Dick understands, they have emotionally become one: he is now incorporated into her problem, or her mental illness. Transference, as Fitzgerald understands it and portrays it, is therefore complete. Motivated by his personal obsession with money, Fitzgerald interprets the psychological concept of transference as a series of transactions between Dr. Dick Diver and Nicole Warren. Hyde explains how the gift moves in a circle (Hyde 16); the gift cycle established in Tender Is the Night is between Nicole, Dick, and the Warrens. The Warrens give Dick money so that he can provide for Nicole as therapist and husband and can build a life for them on the Riviera. Dick is given a life of luxury and wealth, is constantly inundated by a trickling of goods and money (Fitzgerald, Tender 170).

12 Bailey 10 Additionally, he uses the Warrens money to establish his own clinic with Franz 3. The literal business transaction contributes to the resulting loneliness and emptiness present in their marriage: She led a lonely life owning Dick who did not want to be owned (Fitzgerald, Tender 180). Dick gives Nicole love, both in his role as therapist and as husband. While in pure gift-exchange, a circulation is set up and can be counted on (Hyde 114), in this case, the gift-giving stops at Nicole. Her gift-giving began with the ambrosia and myrtle, and, while she gives the gift of sexual love, there is no evidence that that gift-giving continues. Therefore, the gift cycle does not operate equitably. And while the Warrens continue to have enough money to draw upon, Dick goes emotionally bankrupt. As a result of the inequitable gift-exchange, Dick and Nicole s respective mental health statuses operate with an inverse relationship; in that way, their relationship functions as a single transaction. Although Freud argues that transference-love harms the patient, Hyde recognizes the risk a therapist runs when entering into a gift-giving relationship. He explains that there are times when it would be inappropriate for a psychotherapeutic relationship to be a gift relationship all healers risk contamination from their patients (Hyde 71). Nicole, described as the sweet poison (Fitzgerald, Tender 302), contaminates Dick. In a review of the novel, writers for the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease wrote of this contamination and inverse relationship: As, through Diver s care and constant attendance, [Nicole] gains gradually to a firmer hold on reality, Diver himself slowly begins to slip: it would appear in the time scale of the novel that in proportion as Nicole s improvement becomes more definite and complete, Diver, superficially at 3 Franz says: we owe this clinic to Nicole s money. (Fitzgerald, Tender 240)

13 Bailey 11 first, but later more deeply and pragmatically, is aware of the accruing effects of his own integration. ( Journal of Nervous 391) Fitzgerald depicts the Divers relationship as a business transaction, defined as an occurrence in which goods, services, or money are passed from one person, account, etc., to another ( Transaction ). In this case, Dick provides Nicole with his service as psychiatrist; he is her care-taker. Moreover, he passes his vitality to her, the image being that of an hourglass: Nicole and Dick are one, yet the sand of the hourglass passes from the section above to the section below. The hourglass sand represents vitality, energy; the emptiness of the above section represents bankruptcy. Fitzgerald applies additional economic concepts to Dick and Nicole s relationship. Dick recognizes that the principle of diminishing marginal productivity is applicable to Nicole s mental illness. He tells her, you re stronger every day. Your illness follows the law of diminishing returns (Fitzgerald, Tender 267). However, this observation reflects a lack of economic knowledge on the part of Dick Diver, and, by extension, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Dick is correct in his identification of the law of diminishing returns; however, Nicole is not necessarily growing stronger. The law of diminishing returns states that in a production process, adding more workers might initially increase output and eventually creates the optimal output per worker. After that optimal point, however, the efficiency of each worker decreases because other factors such as the production technique or the available resources remain the same ( Diminishing returns ). In the Dick-Nicole case, the input is Dick s therapy, both in the form of marital love and in the form of actual, clinical therapy. The output is Nicole s

14 Bailey 12 recovery. At a certain point the optimal point Dick s therapy yields less results. The dualism in his views of her that of the husband, that of the psychiatrist was increasingly paralyzing his faculties (Fitzgerald, Tender 188). His input becomes increasingly inefficient. Thus, her recovery plateaus. Dick reassures Nicole s sister, Baby Warren, that Nicole is not insane and will not go mad, but that she is, in fact, a schizoid a permanent eccentric. You can t change that. (Fitzgerald, Tender 151). Dick s partner, Franz, reiterates a similar sentiment, suggesting that Nicole will possibly remain something of a patient all her life (Fitzgerald, Tender 239). Dick s observation, therefore, is contradictory, for he claims that Nicole is stronger every day. Nicole only appears to be gaining strength, because Dick as husband-psychiatrist is losing his. Nicole is reluctant to perceive their relationship as a transaction. As an adolescent, she saw Dick as a hero and was unaware of the effect her mental illness could have on him over a long period of time. Fitzgerald writes, she had thought of him really as an inexhaustible energy, incapable of fatigue (Fitzgerald, Tender ). Their romantic absorption into one another results in Dick feeling the heavy blow of each of Nicole s relapses. Dick and Nicole had become one and equal, not opposite and complementary. He could not watch her disintegrations without participating in them (Fitzgerald, Tender ). Dick s disintegration, then, is a direct result of their transference-love relationship and their absorption into one unit. Her episodes of hysteria affect Dick intensely, particularly the Ferris Wheel episode and the car wreck. Fitzgerald describes the Ferris Wheel episode as such: She was alone in what was momentarily the top boat of the wheel, and as it descended he saw that she was laughing hilariously; he slunk back in the crowd, a crowd which, at the wheel s next revolution, spotted the

15 Bailey 13 intensity of Nicole s hysteria (Fitzgerald, Tender 189). Her hysterical laugh punctuates each episode. It occurs again after the car wreck that she causes: She was laughing hilariously, unashamed, unafraid, unconcerned. No one coming on the scene would have imagined that she had caused it; she laughed as after some mild escape of childhood (Fitzgerald, Tender 192). Afterwards, Dick informs her, this last thing knocked me sideways (Fitzgerald, Tender 194). The inverse transaction of mental health is complete in the almost-suicidal scene on the boat, a setting which is fitting for Dick s attitude toward his and Nicole s marriage, a sinking ship from which he must jump. You ruined me, did you? he inquired blandly. Then we re both ruined. So (Fitzgerald, Tender ). In his melancholy he wants to jump from the boat, and he wants to do it with Nicole because of the transference that has made them Dicole (Fitzgerald, Tender 103), a linguistic representation of their absorption. Nicole almost complies: Cold with terror she put her other wrist into his grip. All right, she would go with him again she felt the beauty of the night vividly, in one moment of complete response and abnegation (Fitzgerald, Tender ). Nicole feels the peaceful essence of the evening as she decides to jump with him; it is a moment of self-denial in which she is simply following the request of her husband-psychiatrist. They do not jump, but the experience of such deep loss of agency causes Nicole to understand fully the absorption between them. Her reflections demonstrate her initial desire to separate from Dick: If she need not, in her spirit, be forever one with Dick as he had appeared last night, she must be something in addition, not just an image on his mind, condemned to endless parades around the circumference of a medal (Fitzgerald, Tender 277). Nicole speculates that if there is no longer a

16 Bailey 14 necessity for her to be the wife and patient of Dick Diver in his currently depressive state, then she desires to be independent. As a planet revolving around Dick as sun, she desires to break free from that small prison she is in. Nicole will remain in love with Dr. Diver only so long as she needs him. The fact that she is in love with him is predicated on sickness; when she ultimately comes to feel that she can stand by herself, her love for him collapses (Chamberlain 374). For Nicole, experiencing Dick s suicidal mood inspires her to find freedom and encourages her to have an affair. For Nicole, recognizing her current life as a prison is an opportunity to seek freedom from it (in her case, with another man). Nicole s romantic goals are to be loved, lose agency, find freedom, and attain power in another relationship, only to lose agency again. Nicole s mental illness causes Dick s mental health to worsen; furthermore, alcohol perhaps a gift to himself propels him into decline. Dick s crack-up, a phrase Fitzgerald uses to describe his own deterioration years after the novel s publication, is wrapped up in his alcoholism, but also in his melancholic tendencies, both of which appear before his official crack-up. In preparation for the first party hosted by the Divers in the novel, Nicole recognizes a manic-depressive inclination in Dick: He went back into his house and Nicole saw that one of his most characteristic moods was upon him, the excitement that swept everyone up into it and was inevitably followed by his own form of melancholy, which he never displayed but at which she guessed. This excitement about things reached an intensity out of proportion to their importance. (Fitzgerald, Tender 27)

17 Bailey 15 He is exhibiting symptoms of mania: increased sociability and intense excitement, if not euphoria, in anticipation of the party. However, what follows is always a depressive mood, one he masks from Nicole. Alcohol contributes to Dick s bankruptcy, draining his energy further. Alcohol has a presence throughout the novel, although it s mostly slight, subtle, and even inconsequential. The first suggestion that Dick Diver drinks is on the beach, when Rosemary is observing the cast of characters on the Riviera: The man with the jockey cap was now going from umbrella to umbrella carrying a bottle and little glasses in his hands (Fitzgerald, Tender 11). The presence of alcohol seems normal, an accessory to the social life on the Riviera, and is therefore not yet alarming. Fitzgerald writes that, Dick drank, not too much, but he drank (Fitzgerald, Tender 61), and provides an example of his alcohol intake: an ounce of gin with twice as much water (Fitzgerald, Tender 166), which is not an alarming amount. Dick develops a drinking habit that is motivated by both outward perceptions and inward emotions. While in conversation Dick is described as whipping up his imagination with champagne (Fitzgerald, Tender 260) in order to properly tell a story. Similarly, when reconnecting with Rosemary, his motivation for drinking is to ignore the guilt he is feeling prior to having sex with her: Rosemary took a cocktail and a little wine, and Dick took enough so that his feeling of dissatisfaction left him (Fitzgerald, Tender 213). Dick s drunkenness culminates in Italy, where he exhibits self-destructive tendencies (Berman 77), as well as outward belligerency. The passionate impatience of the week leaped up in Dick and clothed itself like a flash of violence, the honorable, the traditional resource of his land; he stepped forward and slapped the man s face (Fitzgerald, Tender 224). It is suggested

18 Bailey 16 that his sexual frustration, in combination with the effects of alcohol, cause him to react impulsively. Fitzgerald uses a vocabulary of cracking and breakage to describe what happens to Dick Diver s body and what happens to his character. Physically, Dick cracks in Italy a result of his drunken behavior and violent actions. After hitting the Italian policeman the carabinieri Dick is then beaten. He felt his nose break like a shingle and his eyes jerk as if they had snapped back on a rubber band into his head. Momentarily he lost consciousness a bloody haze he was alone (Fitzgerald, Tender 226). After being beaten, Dick is physically broken and sits in an isolated and raw state (Fitzgerald, Tender 233). Dick experiences physical wounds, while in Italy, but also experiences cracks to his character. He explains to Rosemary that he has gone into a process of deterioration. The change came a long way back but at first it didn t show. The manner remains intact for some time after the morale cracks (Fitzgerald, Tender 285). The cracks in his character affect how he interacts with the world around him: Dick s bitterness had surprised Rosemary, who had thought of him as all-forgiving, allcomprehending (Fitzgerald, Tender 287). The truth: He s not received anywhere any more (Fitzgerald, Tender 287). His internal cracks have been unmasked and externalized. He is rude and offensive. He responds to Mary North: But you ve gotten so damned dull, Mary. I listened as long as I could. (Fitzgerald, Tender 264). Dick has gone from enchanting host to insulting drunk. Again he had offended some one couldn t he hold his tongue a little longer? (Fitzgerald, Tender 271). His words are depicted as being as violent as his actions: He crashed into words with a harsh ineptness (Fitzgerald, Tender 272). The shift in his social interactions from

19 Bailey 17 complimentary to offensive is attributed to his inability to hold his liquor. Tommy Barban says to Nicole, There are those who can drink and those who can t. Obviously Dick can t. You ought to tell him not to (Fitzgerald, Tender 274). The deterioration of Dick s personality is evident to those around him, including Rosemary who tells him, Liked you I loved you. Everybody loved you (Tender 314). Rosemary recognizes Dick s change in spirit. Similarly, Nicole observes, you used to want to create things now you seem to want to smash them up (Fitzgerald, Tender 267). Nicole worries about how the crack-up will affect her in their marriage. Dick Diver s depression is certainly correlated with his alcoholism. His depression results in a loss of self, as Fitzgerald explains: He had lost himself he could not tell the hour when, or the day or the week, the month or the year. Once he had cut through things, solving the most complicated equations as the simplest problems of his simplest patients. Between the time he found Nicole flowering under a stone on the Zurichsee and the moment of his meeting with Rosemary the spear had been blunted. (Fitzgerald, Tender 201) Although Dick is unsure of when he lost his sense of self, he is conscious of it happening. He considers himself to be the Black Death I don t seem to bring people happiness any more (Fitzgerald, Tender 219). He no longer gives gifts as flattering party host. He has also lost his former passion and ambition. Franz tells Dick that his heart isn t in the project any more (Fitzgerald, Tender 256). Likewise, Dick recognizes the change that has happened in his attitude towards psychiatry: Not without desperation he had long

20 Bailey 18 felt the ethics of his profession dissolving into a lifeless mass (Fitzgerald, Tender 256). Like his marriage and personality, his profession is empty, without meaning, deteriorated. However, it is likely that his loss of interest in psychiatry is inevitable. Berman argues that Dick invests all his energy and time into authorship (Berman 68) and has a preference for the theoretical over the clinical side of psychiatry (Berman 68). While this preference demonstrates a lack of psychiatric understanding on Fitzgerald s part psychiatric books did not, and do not, have much commercial appeal it also casts Dick as an unconvincing character. Berman claims that the emphasis upon Dick s career as the author of celebrated psychiatric texts suggests that he is less a physician than a writer a writer of psychological breakdowns, as was Fitzgerald himself (Berman 68). Yet, to claim that Dick s psychiatric inclinations are only a sign of Fitzgerald inserting himself his aims and his fear of failure into his character, is to limit potential analysis of Dick as a character. Fitzgerald wrote in a letter that since [Dick s] choice of a profession had accidentally wrecked him, he might plausibly have walked out on the profession itself (Fitzgerald, Letters to Friends 278). Fitzgerald considers Dick s profession alone to have wrecked him, to have caused such damage. But, there is no evidence to support that Dick is a victim of his profession (Berman 68). It is not his vocation that has victimized him. His relationship with Nicole the transference-love turned into a marriage is a much more influential factor. The improper use of his profession leads to the wreckage. Entering into a transference-love relationship although Freud considers it to be inevitable was the riskiest move Dick could have made; becoming a psychiatrist, generally, is not the reason for his downfall.

21 Bailey 19 The final scenes in Fitzgerald s novel illustrate the inverse relationship between Nicole s mental health and Dick s. Dick speaks of his deterioration as if it were a sinking ship. He tells Nicole, I can t do anything for you any more. I m trying to save myself, to which she responds, From my contamination? (Fitzgerald, Tender 301). Nicole rejects Dick s claim that her sickness has contaminated him and depleted his strength. Nicole exclaims, You re a coward! You ve made a failure of your life, and you want to blame it on me. (Fitzgerald, Tender 301). Nicole rejects the notion of a transaction taking place between them in their marriage. There exists an unspoken moment following their discourse in which their connection is broken: And suddenly, in the space of two minutes she achieved her victory and justified herself to herself without lie or subterfuge, cut the cord forever. Then she walked, weak in the legs, and sobbing coolly, toward the household that was hers at last. Dick waited until she was out of sight. Then he leaned his head forward on the parapet. The case was finished. Doctor Diver was at liberty. (Fitzgerald, Tender 302) However, only Nicole experiences the benefits of the divide because she has latched onto Tommy Barban, a new rescuer. Nowlin explains that Nicole, whose gaze once transformed Dick Diver into the supreme object of desire, continue[s] her dry suckling at his lean chest until she recognizes that he has nothing to give and then cut[s] the cord forever that binds her to him (Nowlin 73). She chooses Tommy, who is less civilized (Fitzgerald, Tender 19), barbaric even, but a ruler a hero (Fitzgerald, Tender 196), who falls quickly into his role of Nicole s protector (Fitzgerald, Tender 310). Nicole

22 Bailey 20 follows a distinct pattern in her intimate relationships in which she sees her future partner as a savior from her current partner. She was loved by her father, but lost agency in his incestuous violation of her. She then manipulated, charmed, seduced, and then drained Dick Diver, before pursuing an affair with Tommy Barban. Nicole deliberately enters into an affair with Tommy and partly blames Dick for causing her to be unfaithful. Fitzgerald explains Nicole s thought-process, when he writes: Nicole did not want any vague romance she wanted an affair ; she wanted a change. She realized, thinking with Dick s thoughts, that from a superficial view it was a vulgar business to enter, without emotion, into an indulgence that menaced all of them. On the other hand, she blamed Dick for the immediate situation, and honestly thought that such an experiment might have a therapeutic value. (Fitzgerald, Tender 291) Although there is some internal conflict, she certainly enters into her affair with Barban quite calculatingly, unlike the indecision and guilt with which Dick begins his affair with Rosemary (Berman 83). Dick does eventually have an affair with Rosemary but is extremely hesitant from the start. Soon after meeting Rosemary, and falling for her, he tells her, I m afraid I m in love with you and that s not the best thing that could happen (Fitzgerald, Tender 74). He suspects the potential danger of an affair. When Rosemary and Dick do finally become intimate, he immediately thinks of Nicole: Nicole was his girl. Time with Rosemary was self-indulgence (Fitzgerald, Tender 213); Certain thoughts about Nicole, that she should die, sink into mental darkness, love

23 Bailey 21 another man, made him physically sick (Fitzgerald, Tender 217). However, Nicole finds her potential affair with Barban to be reasonable. She speculates that other women have lovers why not me? (Fitzgerald, Tender 276), and is soon content and happy with the logic of, Why shouldn t I? (Fitzgerald, Tender 277). Furthermore, she blames Dick for his assumed infidelity and his alcoholism and is, therefore, able to justify her actions. For Nicole, the most unhappy aspect of their relations was Dick s growing indifference, at present personified by too much drink. Nicole did not know whether she was to be crushed or spared (Fitzgerald, Tender 280). Not only has she lost the undivided attention of her husband, she has also cast him as dangerous and potentially violent towards her. Therefore it is necessary, in Nicole s mind, to transfer her love from one man to the next. Berman claims that [Nicole] senses that the new union will complete the therapeutic cure initiated by her preceding rescuer. The affair with Barban thus allows her to end the enforced dependency upon another man and to exact a fitting revenge for his marital infidelity (Berman 84). Because she suspects Dick is unfaithful, she transfers her love to Barban in revenge. Her transfer of love to Barban is also necessary for her safety, because of Dick s drinking. In recognizing Dick as emotionally bankrupt, she transfers love to Barban in an experiment that might have therapeutic value (Fitzgerald, Tender 291). In this way, Nicole plays the part of therapist. Her new relationship with Barban is perceived as being therapeutic, not unlike her marriage with Dick. Nicole s behavior is cyclical in nature. This is partly due to the permanent nature of her mental illness caused by the original incestuous violation between her and Devereux Warren, her father. Because it was a sexual violation it has left a wound.

24 Bailey 22 Nicole attempts to use other men as internal bandages to heal that sexual wound. However, the wound remains. She does not truly recover from her schizophrenia. And she never truly stands on her own. Berman details Nicole s love relationship pattern: The structure of Nicole s love relationships to the three men in her life father, husband, lover reveals an element of aggression directed toward the previous man, from whom the successful rival promises to free her. Dick offers to rescue her from the mental illness triggered by her father s incestuous advances. Barban promises to liberate her from her husband s incurable alcoholism. Love thus represents to Nicole an escape from an unhappy situation engendered by the abandonment of an earlier man in her life. (Berman 84-85) However, each new relationship, in some way, repeats the previous relationship. Because of the ten-year age gap between Dick and Nicole, their intimate experiences parallel the relations between Nicole and her father. Nicole sings to Dick in a private, intimate moment, just as she would sing to her father. Devereux Warren describes to the doctors at the clinic how [Nicole] used to sing to me (Fitzgerald, Tender 129); Nicole, in her first encounters with Dick, sang to him (Fitzgerald, Tender 136). Similarly, her relationship with Tommy quickly begins to resemble her marriage with Dick, what Nicole would deem, another little prison (Fitzgerald, Tender 307). For Nicole, the trauma she experienced with her father, and her marriage to Dick Diver have been imprisoning and incapacitating. After Nicole has had the affair with Tommy, it is Tommy not Nicole who informs Dick of the potential for divorce: Tommy faced

25 Bailey 23 Dick, saying: I think Nicole wants a divorce I suppose you ll make no obstacles? (Fitzgerald, Tender 310). Nicole is unable to confront Dick herself to ask for legal divorce; she has no agency. Additionally, when Dick comes to the beach for the last time and is about to leave, Nicole desires to see him. However, Tommy does not allow her to see him or say any parting words. I m going to him, Nicole got to her knees. No, you re not, said Tommy, pulling her down firmly. Let well enough alone. (Fitzgerald, Tender 314). Verbally and physically, Tommy restricts Nicole from doing what she wants. Thus, Nicole s alleged recovery at the close of the novel is not too convincing. Dick s decline, his crack-up, is much more vivid, and is captured most illustratively in the water trick scene. When it is suggested that he attempt to aquaplane, he agrees to try in order to impress Rosemary: It was only the closeness of Rosemary s exciting youth that prompted the impending effort...[to] make a spectacle of himself (Fitzgerald, Tender ). While attempting to aquaplane, he cannot do the same tricks he was once able to do: he is fumbling through stunts he had once done with ease (Fitzgerald, Tender 282). By the end of the novel, Dick has lost his youth and his physique. Perhaps, he is also impotent: he slowly began to rise he was having difficulties he tried to rise. He could not rise lifting an inch, two inches (Fitzgerald, Tender ). Although this scene details Dick s attempts to do aqua tricks, there is a sexual suggestion in the language, that is confirmed by the sexual suggestion of Dick s name and his nickname Lucky Dick, you big stiff (Fitzgerald, Tender 116). In addition to losing his youthful athleticism, it is possible Dick has lost his sexual abilities too.

26 Bailey 24 More crucially, Dick s crack-up which is bound up in his alcoholism results in both vocational and mental declines. His partnership with Franz breaks; not only is his heart not in it anymore, but his unprofessional alcoholism results in uneasiness from both patients and Franz. The father of one patient informs Dick, My son is here for alcoholism, and he told us he smelt liquor on your breath. We hand Von Cohn to you to be cured, and within a month he twice smells liquor on your breath. What kind of cure is that there?... My son comes to a sanitarium and a doctor reeks of it! (Fitzgerald, Tender 253). Dick is beginning to fail at his vocation because of his drinking. Franz s wife, Kaethe, recognizes how Dick s habits are negatively affecting the success of the clinic. She asks Franz, Do you think that sort of thing does the Clinic any good? The liquor I smelt on him tonight, and several other times since he s been back Dick is no longer a serious man (Fitzgerald, Tender 241). Dick, too recognizes how inappropriate his drinking is in relation to his vocation, and does attempt to limit his alcohol intake. He was averaging a half-pint of alcohol a day. Dismissing a tendency to justify himself, he sat down at his desk and wrote out, like a prescription, a régime that would cut his liquor in half. Doctors could never smell of liquor. Dick blamed himself only for indiscretion (Fitzgerald, Tender 254). Dick assumes the role of doctor to himself, writing a quasi-prescription. However, he only considers his alcoholism to be inappropriate at the workplace. Ultimately, he is not very convinced of the need to stop drinking and his drinking escalates. Franz recognizes his unusual pattern of drinking and informs him: Dick, I know well that you are a temperate, well-balanced man, even though we do not entirely agree on the subject of alcohol (Fitzgerald, Tender 255). Ultimately, Franz breaks their professional relationship. Dick had not intended to come

27 Bailey 25 to a decision so quickly, nor was he prepared for Franz s so ready acquiescence in the break (Fitzgerald, Tender 256). The language Fitzgerald uses, once again, is language of breakage. As an intellectual, Dick continues on in fragments. There is no resolution for Dick Diver; he is left wandering in upper New York, as a nomadic doctor. The big stacks of papers on his desk are almost in process of completion (Fitzgerald, Tender 315), but never fully accomplished. In Tender Is the Night, form matches content; there is a lack of resolution, a feeling of incompleteness. In his review of the novel, Malcolm Cowley observed that [the novel] doesn t give the feeling of being complete in itself (Cowley, Tender 387). Its structure is not as compact or complete as some of Fitzgerald s other novels, such as The Great Gatsby. However, the incompleteness of Dick Diver s story, and the disenchantment that results, is compelling. Bruccoli argues that the novel s tone is one of infinite regret conveyed through a seemingly dispassionate factual account of Dick s failures in America. All the information about him has a second-hand, picked-up quality, which reinforces the impression of Dick s migration from failure to failure (Bruccoli 159). To feel unsatisfied about Dick s incomplete, fragmented story (content) is to feel unsatisfied about the novel s seemingly incomplete ending (form). Fitzgerald himself believed that the purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader s mind (Dyer 137). Geoff Dryer further explains that Hemingway later told Max Perkins...that in retrospect [Fitzgerald s] Tender Is the Night gets better and better. (Dyer 137). Likewise, John Updike observed that, So often in Fitzgerald we have only the afterglow of a dream to see by. (Dyer 137). Similarly, Bruccoli observes: In Tender Is the Night the reader is compelled to admire a character whose appalling

28 Bailey 26 decline is traced. The dominant mood, a compound of regret and disenchantment, is carefully built up to the marvelous final chapter. (Bruccoli 73) Fitzgerald s writing style accounts for the reader s sentiment at the close of the novel. However, many readers of the time were dissatisfied with Dick s plot. Almost all negative critiques centered around Dick s unconvincing plot, and Bruccoli explains that the attacks of the verisimilitude of Dick s decline appear to have troubled Fitzgerald more than anything else the critics wrote (Bruccoli 7). It was difficult for critics to accept that [Dick s] resources have been so completely drained that there is no hope for him (Bruccoli 84). Dick s decline regardless of how hard it is to believe is a blend of fact and fiction. F. Scott Fitzgerald projects onto Dick Diver his own experiences with drinking, depression, and fluctuating moods. The novel, which started as a portrait of the Murphys on the Riviera, became a fictionalized account of Fitzgerald s life during the period in which he was writing it (Bruccoli 17), which would explain his irritability and vulnerability towards criticism. The novel s feeling of incompleteness stems more from the incomplete, and even ignored, recovery that Nicole allegedly experiences. Berman considers Nicole to be astonishingly successful as a survivor (Berman 84), and goes on to observe that, What we rarely see in Tender Is the Night is the full-blown marital warfare that inevitability accompanies the subtle betrayal of love (Berman 85). With regard to marital conflict, Fitzgerald represses biographical information and avoids including it in his novel. He does, however, admit that the Divers marital conflict is lurking as early as Book I, when he writes: [Dick] had become intensely critical of [Nicole]. Though he thought she was the most attractive human creature he had ever seen he scented battle from afar, and

29 Bailey 27 subconsciously he had been hardening and arming himself, hour by hour (Fitzgerald, Tender 100). The battle is played out primarily through infidelities and subtle dialogue. However, it is a part of the plot that Fitzgerald assumes the reader will accept, just as he assumes the reader will accept Nicole s diagnosis and recovery. It is remarkable how Nicole is able to heal from her break with Dick; it is even more remarkable that she is able to heal from paternal rape. Furthermore, it is doubtful that the rape she experienced would have, realistically, resulted in the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Berman doubts both Nicole s diagnosis and recovery: We may question Fitzgerald s implication that the incest directly precipitated Nicole s schizophrenia. Indeed, she hardly appears schizophrenic at all (Berman 82). Nicole s diagnosis reflects a lack of understanding, on Fitzgerald s part, about the mental disorder. In the same way that he applies the Freudian concept of transference to the marriage between Dick and Nicole, Fitzgerald applies a simplified version of Freud s Electra complex to Nicole. Her father s incestuous advances result in schizophrenia. Edmund Wilson s explains that Electra is what we should call nowadays schizophrenic (Wilson 261), which, likewise, reflects a misunderstanding of schizophrenia, or, at least, a reductive view of it. In the novel, it is assumed that an incestuous attack upon her in girlhood has split her personality (Canby 371). When speaking to Professor Dohmler, who owns the clinic, Devereux Warren explains his relationship with his daughter, when she was 16 years old: and then all at once we were lovers (Fitzgerald, Tender 129). Mr. Warren has sex with his young daughter. What results are delusions, always related to men, almost always about men going to attack her, men she knew or men on the street anybody